LITMIR.BIZ

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      “OKAY, YOU TENDERFOOTS—tenderfeet—time to take your breakfast dishes into the house, pick up your hats and gloves, and learn the fine art of stall mucking.” Charlie realized what she’d said after the words left her mouth. She gave a quick glance at Hank, but he seemed not to have caught her incredible gaffe. Calling him a tenderfoot! How could she?

      She caught Jake’s eye and felt herself blushing. He’d made the connection, all right. He gave a tiny nod as though to assure her that he absolved her. For a man who ignored his own lunch, he was too aware of the nuances of other people’s behavior.

      “I did you a big favor this morning,” she continued. “I’ve already fed and watered the horses. From here on you’ll do that before breakfast. Then we muck stalls. I did not do that for you.”

      “I’m exempt from mucking stalls,” Mickey said cheerfully. “I don’t swing a pitchfork too good from a wheelchair.”

      “Put on your doggone leg braces,” Hank snapped. “Aren’t you supposed to practice standing and walking?”

      “He can’t pick up a pitchfork full of horse manure yet,” Sean said, and turned to Mickey. “Good try, kid. I didn’t get my sergeant stripes putting up with slackers. I will personally find some nasty chore you can do sitting down.”

      “You’re retired, Sarge,” Mickey said with a grin. “You ain’t the boss o’ me any longer.”

      “But I am,” Charlie said, and slapped the back of the wheelchair cheerfully. “While the rest of us are learning to muck horse manure out of stalls, I’ll set you up in the tack room with saddle soap and harness polish. I’ll bet you know how to put a spit shine on leather, am I right?”

      Mickey groaned. “When do I get to try out that handicapped carriage the colonel was talking about yesterday?”

      “After you’ve learned how to handle the reins and been approved by an instructor. Me. And you won’t be driving alone for a while.”

      She glanced around the table. “Since our regular grooms are on vacation, you’ll be doing their work as well as learning to drive. You can get used to handling reins by practicing on a rein board that emulates what it feels like to drive a horse. We have three in the tack room. We’ll rotate, since I imagine some of you need more practice than others.” She smiled at Jake, who had joined them after breakfast. She hadn’t bothered to try to get him to eat breakfast with them. Lunch was another matter.

      She was grateful that he acted as though nothing had happened between them last night.

      “Our grooms, Maurice and DeMarcus, feed and water at seven every morning.” She slid into one of the remaining chairs around the common room table. “Then they muck stalls and help harness and put to the horses.”

      “Put to what?” Sean asked.

      “That’s what you call harnessing a horse,” Charlie said. “And a horse that is harnessed to a cart or carriage is called being ‘in draft.’ There are a lot of peculiar terms and traditions about carriage driving because it’s been around such a long time. Any of you ever see the big parades from England with the fancy golden carriages and all the white horses?”

      Several heads nodded. Jake’s didn’t move.

      “The carriages are fancier than ours, but we do the same things. The horses are already well broke and used to being in draft, but there’s not a horse in the world that won’t spook in certain circumstances.” Charlie glanced at Mary Anne and saw her twist her hands in her lap. “It’s not like driving a truck or a motorcycle. Remember, the horse wants to survive, too. The motorcycle doesn’t give a darn.”

      Charlie decided to see if she could borrow a small pony and cart from one of her carriage-driving friends for Mary Anne to try. She might be less frightened behind a pony. She could progress to a horse. If they were lucky.

      “Now, you’re also going to learn what it takes to run a farm like this. Yesterday I picked up twenty bags of rolled oats from the feed store, and some trace mineral blocks. They need to be unloaded from my truck. Then later, a load of bagged wood shavings is being delivered from a sawmill in Mississippi.”

      “Mary Anne can’t pick up fifty-pound feed bags,” Hank said.

      “I can pick up anything you can,” Mary Anne snapped.

      “Sure you can,” Hank snickered.

      “This is not a contest,” Charlie said. She noted that Hank’s snide remark had brought Jake’s gaze up, but he said nothing. Jake’s fuse might be long, but she suspected it would burn hot once somebody lit it. If he hadn’t had some propensity for violence, why would he have joined the army?

      She continued. “The horses that are not actually on the driving roster are in pasture. That includes four Percheron mares, two of whom have foals at foot. We’ll take a look at them after lunch. One shire mare is pregnant with a late foal, the other is barren this year. So, with luck, you’ll get to see a baby born sometime soon. If we can catch her having it, that is.”

      “Can’t you tell when it’s coming?” Mary Anne asked.

      “Theoretically. But mares are sneaky. We’ll bring her into the foaling stall when she starts showing signs she’s close to labor, but she’ll probably wait until the darkest, stormiest night of the year when everybody’s back is turned before she drops her foal.” She nodded. “Okay, people, let’s get to it.”

      * * *

      MARY ANNE STACKED fifty-pound bags of feed right along with Charlie and the men. Every time she passed Hank, she tossed her head at him. He grinned and shrugged.

      Midmorning a rusty three-quarter-ton truck with square bags of shavings loaded precariously on its bed pulled up outside the aisle door.

      “Hey, Charlie, you got room to stack these shavings in the same place?” The middle-aged man who stuck his head out of the truck wore a straw Stetson over a face that looked as tough as if it had been professionally tanned but not stretched afterward.

      “Man has more wrinkles than a Shar-Pei,” Sean whispered.

      “Hush,” Charlie whispered back. Then she said in a normal voice, “Drive on down the aisle to the end as usual, Bobby.”

      “We got any help? Where’s Maurice and DeMarcus?”

      “On vacation. Jake and Sean here will help unload. Guys, this is Bobby Holzer. He owns the sawmill down in Slayden that bags our shavings.”

      Bobby nodded and pointed to the figure beside him in the shadows. “I brung some help just in case. This here’s one of my summer helpers.” He put the truck in gear, drove down the stable aisle to the far end and parked by the storage area where the few remaining bales sat waiting for the new load to be added.

      The white-blond hair of the kid who climbed from the passenger seat was partially covered by a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap. Unlike Bobby, who wore baggy bib overalls over a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the boy had on distressed jeans stretched tight over thigh muscles the size of hawsers on an aircraft carrier, while his arms and torso strained the stitching on his green polo shirt. He stood at six-six or six-seven and probably weighed well over three hundred pounds. None of it was fat. “Aidan, this is Miss Charlie Nicholson, owner and manager.” The giant nodded.

      “Whoa!” Sean whispered.

      Bobby smiled and winked at him. “Aidan’s starting at tackle for Mississippi State this fall. Coach sends ’em to me for the summer. Tells ’em working in the sawmill builds muscles.”

      “He’s got enough already,” Sean said.

      Charlie introduced Sean and Jake. Bobby shook hands. Aidan didn’t.

      He looked sulky at the prospect of unloading and stacking an entire truckload of sixty-pound bales, but he hopped up on the back of the truck and worked his way to the front without comment.

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